Miko felt as though she had experienced a long dream.
In the dream, life and death seemed to be reversed; originally just an ordinary high school girl, she too was chosen by an ancient divine maiden, gaining mysterious powers and becoming a member of the squad saving the world. After experiencing an adventure that wasn't overly long, yet was quite fantastical, she successfully saved the world.
The breeze was soft; it was time to wake up.
Someone spoke these words beside her ear.
And so, the maiden's consciousness gradually surfaced from the hazy dreamland.
She slowly opened her eyes, her blurred vision taking in a patch of dim yellow light, faint yet warm.
The girl's eyes narrowed slightly, quickly adapting to that soft light.
She felt her head was somewhat groggy, but soon realized that although she was lying on a cold and hard surface—presumably some sort of ground—her head was resting on a warm, slightly soft touch.
"Asakura... Ah, huh?"
Miko involuntarily raised her head slightly, only to realize that she was actually lying on Asakura's lap; that unfamiliar warmth and dense aura caused her heart to accelerate slightly.
This made the girl subconsiously purse her lips, her peripheral vision quietly sweeping over his face—his gaze was looking indifferently into the distance, seemingly unaware of her awakening.
Miko's cheeks turned slightly hot, a flurry of bewildered thoughts uncontrollably flashing through her mind; the air seemed to congeal somewhat, and even her heartbeat became uneven, like a deer wildly leaping within.
"Are you awake?" Yet unexpectedly, Asakura blurted out words that subtly reminded Miko of what a teacher might say: "Don't look at my face; look ahead."
The deer died.
Like a girl whose little secret had been discovered, she sat up somewhat shyly, only then realizing that Chika was right beside Asakura, looking at her with a 'so envious' expression on her face.
This made Miko feel even more embarrassed.
Thus, she decided to follow Asakura's words, looking ahead as if she knew nothing.
At this moment, they seemed to be sitting on a stone platform, gazing into the distance—there stood a grand shrine with winding corridors and lofty, upturned eaves.
It wasn't until this moment that the girl suddenly realized where she actually was.
Was what she had done earlier truly not a dream after all?
Immediately after, the girl noticed something amiss.
First was above the shrine: in her 'dream', there should have been a bright full moon, yet hanging high in the sky right now was a sliver of a crescent moon, its final bit of brightness about to submerge into darkness.
That shrine remained brilliant.
Tier upon tier of eaves glinted with a warm golden hue under the illumination of the firelight, resembling a palace structure that existed only in fantasy settings.
Lanterns hung down from beneath the eaves, spreading out all along the stone steps; the flames burned quietly in the night, neither swaying nor going out, as though completely detached from the time of this world.
Yet that stability was being shattered bit by bit.
A row of lanterns near the edge of the mountain suddenly quivered slightly.
There was no wind in this world, so it was no prank of the wind.
In fact, to the girl, the trembling of that firelight looked more like a frame stuttering—the light froze in a certain instant, then abruptly jumped into another form.
In the next moment, the flames within the lanterns suddenly became slender, stretching into an unnatural line of light, as if pinched by someone's fingers and dragged upward.
Then, the flames snapped silently like severed threads, vanishing just like that.
Leaving behind only empty lantern shells.
Chika stood beside the stone platform; her expression, which had originally carried a bit of excitement and curiosity, was now completely subdued.
Her fingers unconsciously tightened around her sleeve, her gaze slowly moving alongside a lantern that went dark; her throat moved slightly, yet in the end, she said nothing.
Asakura glanced at her and patted her head reassuringly.
He was then met with a couple of pouting complaints from the pink-haired girl, yet she didn't dodge away; instead, she narrowed her eyes, enjoying it somewhat.
Miko stood by her side, her body tensing slightly.
Her gaze didn't just linger on the lanterns, but instinctively swept across further places—those eerie blue shadows floating in the air, those things wandering on both sides of the stone steps.
Although they were originally blurry, they still followed certain rules, drifting between the lantern fires and pausing on the stone steps as if constrained by some force.
Yet now, they began to disperse.
Not merely losing their form, but vanishing in the literal sense.
A shadow would suddenly freeze as if fixed in place, its edges gradually turning rough, peeling off piece by piece like pixels; then, those peeled-off portions did not fall, but halted in midair, slowly turning into fine points of light.
And that starlight-like light dust added a bit more dreamlike color to this space.
"Those... guys?" Miko wasn't quite sure how she should address those eerie blue shadows; she merely looked at Asakura with some confusion: "Is Mr. Asakura not going to save them? Weren't they already tamed by you earlier?"
"Those shadows are all poor souls trapped in this space, and now they have obtained liberation—you can call it salvation or attaining Buddhahood," Asakura shook his head. "Compared to remaining in the world to be continually enslaved—even if the person enslaving them were me—this kind of liberation is clearly far better for them."
"I see... As expected of Mr. Asakura."
Miko said with admiration.
Her gaze turned toward those shadows once more, wanting to witness the moment they attained liberation after enduring long tortures:
There were shadows clutching their own heads with both hands, watching their companions beside them vanish and making 'oh! no!' gestures; some shadows were wildly sprinting up the stone steps, seemingly attempting to escape from something, only to be caught up to in the end and begin vanishing; some shadows spun around hysterically, looking bewildered and helpless, falling into despair.
Miko: ...
Is this truly attaining liberation, or did Mr. Asakura simply find saving countless shadows too much of a hassle, so he chose to sit back and watch them vanish?
The girl pondered for a moment and felt that Asakura must have a deeper reason for doing this, so she decided not to think further, merely wishing in her heart that they could attain happiness after being saved—
Following that, Miko's line of sight unconsciously retreated, falling upon those long stone steps.
The stone steps were still there.
Yet that 'solid' feeling was disappearing.
She clearly saw that the edges of the top few steps were starting to blur, the texture of the stone no longer clear—it wasn't a case of 'missing textures' or '+.jpg' glitches, but rather contours that ought to have been hard were slowly bleeding out like paper soaked in water.
Then, a small corner of the stone steps silently went missing.
It didn't shatter or crumble away.
Instead, it was as if it had been wiped directly off the canvas.
Vanished.
Having finally grown annoyed with Asakura head-patting her, Chika shook her head to break free from his clutches, following Miko's line of sight toward the shrine's stone steps.
She too was startled by the disappearance of the stone steps, her wooden clogs stepping onto the stone platform without producing a sound.
She couldn't help but turn her head to look at Asakura.
Asakura didn't look at her.
His gaze remained fixed on a further distance—the center of that shrine.
There, it was collapsing.
The initial collapse wasn't within view, as it started from the inside.
Even if Asakura hadn't set fire to the interior, the shrine likely entered a state of 'massive blaze' due to things like worship incense and candles inside.
Thus, the collapse began from within.
The eaves on the top layer suddenly trembled slightly.
In that instant, the magnificent and colossal shrine built entirely of wooden structures seemed to lose its fulcrum, as fine cracks spread along the roof.
Had it been merely that, it would only be a collapse of a physical nature; yet at this moment, that crack was not just an opening on a physical level—even the colors shifted out of alignment.
Red lacquer, firelight, and purple-red sandalwood misplaced their positions in a single moment.
Immediately after, the lights across the entire tier were wiped away like by an invisible hand, going out area by area.
The contour of the eaves began to grow discontinuous.
Some parts still existed, while some parts had already vanished, leaving behind only disjointed afterimages that were unstable, flickering in sight like a image with bad signal reception, appearing and disappearing.
The waterfall even further away began to experience issues as well.
The stream of water originally pouring down from above suddenly paused for a split second.
The water above was still falling while the water below had already vanished, leaving a section of empty blankness in the middle. That blankness lasted for less than a second before being filled by new water, yet the replenished water flowed in chaotic directions—some upward, some sideways—as if gravity had been lost.
The world began to fall into disorder.
"What a pity."
Chika said in a low voice: "I actually quite liked that shrine."
"It just looked nice," Asakura said, "It wasn't anything good."
Although the shrine maiden possessing Miko spoke in a lighthearted, offhanded manner—as if building the entire shrine was merely playing Minecraft in creative mode—the reality was clearly not so.
Just like the most basic aspect—
She claimed she had dispelled the rancor of the vengeful spirits dragged into this space, and that was indeed the case; those eerie blue shadows were fundamentally vengeful spirits, except their aggressiveness was nowhere near as high, nor were they as filthy.
Yet was dispelling rancor really something so easily accomplished?
Clearly not; attempting to thoroughly erase rancor out of thin air is a remarkably troublesome task. Dispelling the rancor of just one or two vengeful spirits is easy to speak of, but if vengeful spirits were continuously delivered over five hundred years, let alone a mere shrine maiden who lost her body, even some lower-ranking deities of Japan's native Shinto religion would hardly be capable of it.
So in reality, that shrine maiden had taken a shortcut.
She utilized the supreme authorization of the Ritual of Ryūri to 'collect life', directly disguising rancor as 'part of life' to strip it away from the vengeful spirits, and then intentionally interrupted the step where the Ritual of Ryūri transported life, intercepting the rancor—which originally would have been used as ritual fuel—at the packaging stage.
And the ultimate product was the foundation for building this shrine.
The entire shrine was not constructed from physical materials in reality, but was a product of pure rancor, which was why the space inside was so distorted.
The air grew heavy.
Every single object was losing its position.
Lanterns floated, no longer following trajectories. Some suddenly froze, others suddenly accelerated, as if dragged around at random by some force. Several lanterns overlapped in midair, then vanished simultaneously, leaving behind only a blurred trace of light.
The stone steps fractured section by section.
The path ahead suddenly lost a chunk.
Even the stone platform beneath Asakura and the others' feet began to cave in, startling Miko and Chika.
Yet they didn't fall down, remaining standing tall in the void, as though there were still an invisible floor beneath their feet.
Asakura stood there, his gaze toward the shrine remaining calm.
The massive shrine was no longer whole; it was like a painting being torn apart piece by piece by an invisible, giant hand.
Even the entire space began to be peeled away layer by layer.
The moon hanging high in the sky finally had even its last bits of light submerged.
Leaving behind only a sparse few lantern lights falling upon the wreckage of the shrine and stone steps, appearing exceptionally cold.
Chika stood in place, her fingers tightening unconsciously.
Miko softly held her breath.
In their vision, that shrine leading to the other shore was vanishing from this world layer by layer.
At this moment, a phantom image wearing shrine maiden attire appeared before everyone.
They couldn't see her face clearly, yet Miko alone felt an inexplicable sense of familiarity when looking at her.
Is that the shrine maiden? The girl speculated.
The phantom of the shrine maiden flashed a smile toward her, then bowed slightly toward Asakura to express her gratitude.
And then, like a dream or a bubble, she gradually vanished alongside the shrine behind her.
A five-hundred-year illusory dream—a torture so long that she had despaired, wanted to give up, and grit her teeth to persevere through countless times—finally came to an end here.
Asakura also nodded slightly toward her: Although he didn't even know her name, and even though he was the MVP while she felt subtly like someone riding coattails to victory, she had indeed been of help.
Miko, having shared a portion of her feelings, was deeply moved, looking at her with tear-filled eyes in a reluctant farewell.
The only one left unthanked, Chika: ...
Why do I feel like I have so little presence or participation? By the way, wasn't I the one dating and visiting the festival with Asakura in the first place, hey!
"Asakura-kun, do you have any plans for the rest of the summer break?" Thus, the girl decisively ignored the sorrowful atmosphere of saying goodbye to Miss Shrine Maiden, asking Asakura in a very despi... intelligent manner.
"I originally wanted to continue my ghost story tour..." Asakura sighed, feeling that his ghost story tour plan for this summer break hadn't gone smoothly at all, except for the seaside inn at the very beginning; far too many things had happened throughout the summer break, and although less than a month had passed in reality, it felt as long as six months: "Though to be honest, the remaining days aren't enough for that kind of hassle anymore, so I'll probably just spend them leisurely at home."